| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: sweet? oh, just a flower! And all her heart and all her soul was
wrapped up in her child, her little girl, two years old. And it
died, and she went wild with grief, just wild! Well, the only
comfort she had was that she'd see her child again, in heaven -
'never more to part,' she said, and kept on saying it over and
over, 'never more to part.' And the words made her happy; yes,
they did; they made her joyful, and when I was dying, twenty-seven
years ago, she told me to find her child the first thing, and say
she was coming - 'soon, soon, VERY soon, she hoped and believed!'"
"Why, it's pitiful, Sandy."
He didn't say anything for a while, but sat looking at the ground,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair: if anything, he would have the church do about the evils of our
time. I find him praising the sermons of Dr. Westcott, Bishop of
Durham, as being the proper sort for clergymen to preach. Bishop
Westcott, whether he is talking to a high society congregation,
or to one of workingmen, shows "an exquisite sense of knowing
always where to stop." So I consulted the Bishop's volume, "The
Social Aspects of Christianity" and I see at once why he is
popular with the anti-Socialist propagandists--neither I or any
other man can possibly discover what he really means, or what he
really wants done.
I was fascinated by this Westcott problem; I thought maybe if I
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: stop up that hole, would certainly have found the stiff abandoned there,
and it might have been possible, thread by thread, straw by straw,
to pick up the scent and reach you. Some one has passed through
the sewer. Who? Where did he get out? Was he seen to come out?
The police are full of cleverness. The sewer is treacherous and
tells tales of you. Such a find is a rarity, it attracts attention,
very few people make use of the sewers for their affairs,
while the river belongs to everybody. The river is the true grave.
At the end of a month they fish up your man in the nets at
Saint-Cloud. Well, what does one care for that? It's carrion!
Who killed that man? Paris. And justice makes no inquiries.
Les Miserables |
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: through the private gate into the woods where the bluebells and
common orchid were in profusion. Never before had I tasted so
completely the fine sense of privilege and ownership. And all
this has to end, I told myself, all this has to end.
Neither my uncle nor I had made any provision for disaster; all
we had was in the game, and I had little doubt now of the
completeness of our ruin. For the first time in my life since he
had sent me that wonderful telegram of his I had to consider that
common anxiety of mankind,--Employment. I had to come off my
magic carpet and walk once more in the world.
And suddenly I found myself at the cross drives where I had seen
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